


The New Normal

by rosewindow



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Scott, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, but it has a happy ending, this is a dark fic y'all, zombies (ish)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 13:59:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewindow/pseuds/rosewindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mission was fucked from the beginning. They didn’t have enough intel, there should have been a werewolf on the team, and they went out at the wrong time of day, but all three of them were all good enough that nobody raised any objections. No one was ever quite sure exactly what happened. The basic facts, as far as anyone could gather, were that creepies had shown up unexpectedly, in larger numbers than they’d ever encountered before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Normal

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by xxeye, and the original fill can be found here:  
> http://rosewindow.tumblr.com/post/49915100436/this-was-a-super-fun-prompt-thank-you  
> It kind of exploded from there.  
> The idea of the New Normal is from a dear friend of mine.

The mission was fucked from the beginning. They didn’t have enough intel, there should have been a werewolf on the team, and they went out at the wrong time of day, but all three of them were all good enough that nobody raised any objections. No one was ever quite sure exactly what happened. The basic facts, as far as anyone could gather, were that creepies had shown up unexpectedly, in larger numbers than they’d ever encountered before. Lydia had launched a homemade grenade into the horde and successfully stopped them, but on their way out, the fire brought down a wall, and Stiles and his dad had been injured.

Lydia’s scream summoned the Pack to her, but they had to fight their way through newly arrived creepies, and by the time Scott and Derek make it to her side, the situation is dire. They get the two of them out from under the debris, and Scott - who has more first aid training - goes for the Sheriff, whose injuries look worse. They are- pretty bad.

Stiles is still conscious, so Scott pitches his voice low when he says, “Derek, I think you need to give him the Bite.”

Derek shakes his head. “No. Not anyone else. We can help them.”

“Derek. _Derek_. There’s nothing I can do, and we won’t be able to get him out of here and back to my mom fast enough. We need to do something _now_.”

Derek just keeps shaking his head, his hands desperate and unsteady on Stiles. His face is covered in blood from a gash on his forehead, but head wounds bleed a lot, Scott is more concerned with the hole in his side and the fact that he’s slipping into unconsciousness.

“ _Help me_ ,” Scott pleads, and that gets Derek moving.

They move the last piece of rubble, and Scott knows that the Sheriff’s not going to make it. A piece of glass sliced through his thigh, down to the bone, and his femoral artery is- well, it was gushing blood, but there’s not a lot left to gush at this point.

“Can you bite him? Can you save him?” Scott asks, hand clenching in Derek’s shirt.

“It’s- I don’t- I think it’s too late,” he whispers.

“What about Stiles?” Scott demands.

“He’s weak- so weak. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Scott tosses Derek away from him and takes his best friend’s wrist. There’s still a pulse, but it’s feeble and erratic.

“He’s still alive. These injuries are survivable by werewolf standards. You’ve got to try.”

Derek pushes himself back over the rubble, shaking and terrified.

“Derek!” Scott snaps, but Derek’s eyes are locked on the Sheriff’s body. Two sets of wide, unseeing eyes.

“Goddamn you, Derek. _Do_ something!”

When Derek doesn’t move, Scott leaps at him, and sinks claws into his wrist. He’s working off instinct; some part of him knows exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. He twists his hand and Derek gasps, eyes burning red and then blue. Scott feels heat travel up his arm and into his heart, burning at his core like a sun.

He releases Derek dismissively and clambers back to Stiles’s side. He’s beat up pretty badly, but his right arm is unscathed. Scott takes his wrist much more tenderly than he just took Derek’s, and sinks his teeth into the soft flesh there.

The others arrive, though they may have been there for a while without Scott noticing. Boyd silently takes the Sheriff’s body. Isaac helps Scott rig up a stretcher for Stiles, and Lydia takes Derek’s hand to lead him back to base.

\---

Scott doesn’t sleep a wink that night. Heartbeats keep him up. First it’s his own - a ragged, uneven racing that he hasn’t felt since his days of asthma attacks. Then it’s Stiles’s which is weak - so weak and shallow he can barely hear it even across the room. Finally he realizes that he’s hearing the heartbeats of everyone in the group - Derek’s weakened but determined, Isaac’s nervous and alert, Boyd and Lydia’s steady and in sync, Chris and Allison’s moving around the perimeter, and his mom’s warm and alive and right outside the door. The Pack, Scott thinks, _His_ Pack. The thought is settling. Scott breathes out for what feels like the first time in hours.

His mom comes in with a mug of real hot chocolate. “I’ve been hoarding a few for emergencies,” she whispers, pressing the warm drink into his hands. “How’s he doing?”

Scott shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

She puts a hand on the back of his neck and he leans into it. “How are _you_ doing?”

Scott groans. “Heavy,” he mutters. “I feel too big for my body.”

“That’s the Alpha,” Derek says, leaning against the doorframe. “I can help with it if you want, but obviously I wasn’t the best.”

Scott looks up at him, surprised. “You’re not mad?”

Derek rolls his head weakly from side to side. “You’ll be a better Alpha, I think. I was always supposed to be a Beta. If you’ll have me.”

“Of course. You can be my Second.”

Derek shakes his head again. “Pick Boyd, or-” he hesitates, “or Stiles.”

The three of them turn to look at the body on the bed.

“If he-” Scott starts.

“He’ll make it,” Derek insists, but there’s a tone in his voice that says, “he has to.”

If Stiles dies tonight, Scott realizes, he’s going to lose Derek too.

\---

Scott is expecting a gradual change - a strengthening heartbeat, a shift in smell, a growing awareness of another wolf - after all, it took awhile for him to recognize his new nature - but there’s no warning. One moment Stiles is lying prone on the bed, looking nearly dead and so, so human. The next he’s bolt upright, snarling, heart pounding, and eyes molten gold.

“Where’s my dad?” Is the first thing he says.

Mom makes a soft, shocked noise, and Stiles turns towards her.

“Where is he? What happened, Melissa?”

He moves quickly - he’s always been fast, Scott thinks, faster than him - and he’s inches away from Mom when Scott tackles Stiles back to the bed.

“Get the fuck out of my way, Scott,” Stiles snarls. “I want to see my dad. Where is he?”

Scott doesn’t budge.

“Shut the door on your way out, Mom,” he says, letting the red bleed into his eyes.

Stiles goes still underneath him.

Boyd and Isaac have both come in over the course of the night to check on Stiles and greet the new Alpha, and Scott knows how they feel to him, knows the sense of adopted Pack. Stiles is different. Stiles feels like his, like an extension of himself. Scott knows with sudden clarity that he could make Stiles do anything with the same ease that he can tell his arms and legs to move.

He scrambles backwards off of Stiles. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, panicked. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t-”

Stiles sits up more slowly this time. He’s still half-shifted and the Wolf looks strange on his face. “What happened,” he says flatly.

Scott can’t look at him. “There was an explosion. We- _I_ had to bite you.”

“Dad’s dead, isn’t he.”

Scott finally looks up. Stiles’s face is utterly blank. “Yeah,” he whispers.

Stiles lies down again. “Oh.”

Scott scoots closer. Stiles smells of pain and the salt of unshed tears and Wolf now and underneath that, his human scent which was so similar to the Sheriff’s.

“How did this become our life, Scott?” Stiles asks plaintively.

Scott remembers a night in late summer when a boy listened in on his dad’s calls and went out into the woods with his best friend, but he can’t say that, can’t, can’t.

“It’s probably Derek’s fault,” he says instead.

It’s a broken sound, but Stiles laughs. “If there was ever a guy who could single-handedly start the zombie apocalypse, it would be Derek Hale. Speaking of, how come you’re all Alpha-y now? You didn’t kill him did you?”

Scott shakes his head. “Just took the power. The Pack’s mine now.”

“That’s good.”

They lie in silence for awhile, squeezed together on the narrow bed.

“Scott,” Stiles says eventually, his voice tiny. “I can’t change back.”

Scott looks over, and sure enough, Stiles is still in his Beta form. “Oh. You just need an anchor, something to keep you human.”

Stiles freezes. “It was always him. He was the reason I fought to stay alive, why I came back from missions.”

“I didn’t- I didn’t know.”

Scott thinks for a minute. “Wait here.”

He darts through the house to the room where they’d laid out Sheriff Stilinski. He was a practical man and had adjusted well to the apocalypse - as well as anyone could - but he’d kept two purely sentimental things and they were both on a chain which he wore at all times. The first was his wedding band, and the second was his Beacon Hills Sheriff badge. Scott undoes the chain carefully and brings it back to Stiles.

“You know that the dead aren’t really gone. His memory can still anchor you.”

Scott watches a tear well up at the corner of Stiles’s golden brown eye and roll down slowly until it reaches the tip of his human nose.

\---

The thing about the apocalypse is that the world has ended, but life keeps going on. They move hideouts - no one puts up a fuss. As much trouble as moving is, it’s infinitely better than staying in the place where the Sheriff died.

Stiles takes pretty quickly to being a werewolf. “I’ve been training for this since high school,” he jokes. “Chasin’ after all you idiots.” The warehouse they find for Stiles’s first full moon turns out to be perfect for a long term base. There are offices on an upper level, accessible by a single staircase, and an open space on the ground floor with natural light through unbroken windows. There’s even a largely intact chain link fence around the perimeter, and a sizeable stream within a day’s walk.

When Scott was very small, his grandfather had died suddenly and unexpectedly. He and his mom had gone to visit his abuela a few months later to see how she was adjusting.

“I am discovering the New Normal, Querida,” she had insisted, planting a kiss on his mom’s cheek.

Scott finds himself thinking about her a lot. Thrived is the wrong word, but she had been strong, and had gotten on with life without her husband. That’s what they have to do, to get on with life despite their losses. They’re finding their New Normal.

\---

Scott nudges the door open with his hip, his arms occupied with a huge wooden box.

“Lucy! I’m home!” he calls into the echoing space.

“Jesus Christ, Scott,” Stiles shouts back. “Does stealth mean nothing to you?”

“More than it means to you,” Boyd shoots back easily, ambling over to see what’s Scott’s brought.

Stiles flicks him off.

“Calm down my children. I brought something for everyone. Is Allison back?”

“She and Chris are still out. Derek’s with them.”

Scott laughs. “There’s something I never thought I’d hear. We’ll wait then.”

Stiles whines. “Scooooottt. Come on. Not even for your bestest buddy? Your old pal Stiles? Your-”

Boyd cuffs him, knocking Stiles back on his ass. Stiles is on his feet seconds later, half-shifted and snarling. Boyd lets his claws extend slowly, his eyes burning the same gold. Scott growls, nothing shifted but his eyes, and both of them bow their heads under his red gaze.

Isaac stumbles out of his room on the upper level. “Keep it down, assholes. Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Scott’s eyes snap up to him, checking for injuries. “Any trouble last night?”

Isaac shakes his head. “Just got back late. Lydia insisted we check one more lab, and then a bunch of the creepies showed up. Luckily the lab was well-stocked.” He grins wickedly.

Scott shakes his head. The attacks have been getting closer and closer. They might have to move again. The warehouse is pretty defensible - especially with Stiles and Lydia’s booby traps - but they do have at least three humans under their protection, and no one’s sure what a bite would do to Lydia so Scott doesn’t want to risk it. It wouldn’t do to get careless. It only takes one slip up to be up to your armpits in creepies.

The door clangs open and shut again, and Scott feels a little of the tension leave him at having his entire pack together again.

Derek shakes off the shift, blue eyes brilliant in the dim room, and crosses immediately to Scott. “No activity to the north. If we need to move, we should head that way.”

“Thanks, Derek.”

“Are we moving?” Stiles asks from his perch on the steps.

“Just keeping our options open,” Scott explains. “Go get Lydia and my mom, would you?”

Stiles gives him a salute and a cheeky grin and clatters up the stairs. While Stiles does that, Scott starts unpacking the box under the watchful gazes of his pack. He put the essentials on top; boring things like toilet paper, matches, some water purifying tablets that had been miraculously overlooked, and a few cans of food. Then there’s a neatly folded camping blanket. When the others arrive, Scott pulls back the blanket with a little flourish. Everyone crowds in to look.

“Is that-”

“How did you-”

“Oh my God, Scott, I love you.”

Scott ruffles Stiles’s hair. It’s getting long again, he notices absently. “I love you too, buddy.”

“Where?” Allison finally asks, picking up one of the dusty and faded, but still perfectly intact bottles of wine.

“I actually found them a while ago,” Scott admits, “But I was looking for a good time to drink them.”

Allison locks eyes with him, and her smile is so warm and bright that his heart aches.

Isaac opens a bottle with a claw, Boyd grabs their metal mugs, and Scott pours out a bit for each of them. Derek pours a bit out onto the ground and everyone looks down in silence. Stiles reaches compulsively for the Sheriff’s badge pinned to his belt, but Scott takes his hand before he can reach it and squeezes tight.

There are toasts to various things; someone gives a toast practically every time they take a sip. To Molotov cocktails. To running water. To Chris’s shooting skills. To the cold snap. To the President of the United States, wherever the fuck he is. To Stiles’s harmonica - that finally broke. To Melissa’s speedy stitches. To wine. To alcohol. To the Pack.

Scott takes his second cup over to the bench Allison is sitting on. She smiles at him again, and leans in to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you, Scott,” she whispers.

“For the wine?” he whispers back.

“That, and, you know,” she replies, smiling again.

He pulls her into a tight hug. Before he lets go, he kisses her forehead and mouths, “Happy Birthday, Allison.”

Lydia waves her over, and Scott settles back on the bench. He’s only been the Alpha for a couple of months, but the Pack feels good, feels strong. He watches Isaac and Stiles wrestle and smiles, even as he feels a pang of regret for his human friend. The Bite - whether it’s a gift or a curse - changes you, and while Scott had no choice, he hopes it was the right one.

“You’re thinking too much,” Derek says, leaning on the wall next to him. “Stiles’ll start calling you ‘Sourwolf’ soon.”

Scott snorts and Derek’s mouth twitches up. There’s a hint of blue in his eyes when they catch the evening sun slanting through the high windows.

“Do you miss being Alpha?” Scott asks suddenly. He’s looking out at the room, not at Derek, so he doesn’t see how he reacts, but he sees Isaac stiffen the tiniest bit.

“Maybe sometimes,” Derek admits softly. “But I spent so much time looking back, consumed by the past. It’s time to look forward, I think.”

“What’s ahead for us?”

“I’m not sure, but whatever it is, we’ll all face it together.”

\---

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi over on tumblr! (rosewindow)


End file.
